video cards - power limit

[DL87]

Hi, I noticed that all the decent video cards have a minimum power requirement of 350 W. Let's just say if I were to install one requiring 350 W on a computer with a 300 W power supply, would it burnt out? I was told by an engineering buddy of mine that the "minimum requirements" were made under the assumption that you are running two harddrives (which I'm not) and that it was safe to install the card as long as I'm not running like tens of programs at the same time. What are your opinions?

[goofball]

They are just giving you that as a base figure, you don't "need" to run a minimum 350w, it depends on the other components in your system. They are basing it on the fact that most PSU's bundled with el-cheapo cases are crap with horrible efficiency to boot.

[movieman]

The problem is that PCs have different power lines of different voltages with different current limits, and different components use different amounts of current at each voltage. So what they really mean is something like 'this card requires 12A at 5V, 2A at 3.3V and 4A at 12V', but that's too technical for most people to deal with; so they pick a figure for a level at which the power supply should provide enough power on those lines in a typical system.

As to what will happen if the PSU is underpowered, it could certainly cause crashes and potentially could burn things out if it's seriously overloaded.